Anti-SSM Giant Falls

Marriage is how society recognizes and protects this right. Marriage is the planet’s only institution whose core purpose is to unite the biological, social and legal components of parenthood into one lasting bond. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its children.

At the level of first principles, gay marriage effaces that gift. No same-sex couple, married or not, can ever under any circumstances combine biological, social and legal parenthood into one bond. For this and other reasons, gay marriage has become a significant contributor to marriage’s continuing deinstitutionalization, by which I mean marriage’s steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state’s licensing of private relationships that are privately defined.

I have written these things in my book and said them in my testimony, and I believe them today. I am not recanting any of it.

But there are more good things under heaven than these beliefs. For me, the most important is the equal dignity of homosexual love. I don’t believe that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over. Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.

This is not a retreat, it’s a surrender. He surrendered for strategic reasons, but this is a surrender. Waiting to see what Maggie’s reaction is…

“Now, please let us know: Why should their marriages not be recognized by the government? Why should they have differential treatment on tax law, inheritance law, etc., and being able to visit each other in the hospital?”

Why do people still trot out this tired red herring? I am sure your friends are wonderful. What does that have to do with anything?

Your friends ought be be treated differently because their relationship is different. Why do we treat corporations differently than individuals? Co-ops differently than for profit businesses? Why are friendships different than love affairs?

Should government also “recognize” friendships? How about owner/ pet relationships? Sibling rivalries?

The better question to ask is why should your friends have access to the same benefits conferred upon married people who bear and raise children? Who actually perform the function of marriage? They shouldn’t. It would be an injustice to do so. The SSM argument is partially an argument in favor of an injustice.

Only heterosexual married people can do what they do. It’s unique. Everything else is a parody.

The better question to ask is why should your friends have access to the same benefits conferred upon married people who bear and raise children?

Except for the oft-stated fact that those benefits are conferred upon married people regardless of whether or not they are bearing or raising children.

If your main argument against extending the benefits of marriage to same sex couples is that those benefits are there to subsidize child rearing, then it seems to me that you have to explain why those benefits are conferred on people who are not raising children.

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And when is this website going to fix the technical problem that prevents “Older Comments” from being shown?

Matt, “made to order” adoption is a catch all term I use to include surrogacy or the international adoption of newborns or children under 5 to avoid waiting lists and trauma. Made to Order is because the population of adoptable kids like that are relatively low, and worries about baby laundering i.e. stealing abound. IVF is reducing that though.

Lord Karth, Judges wasn’t a particularly fun time to live in. Forgive me if I hope we aren’t remnants of faithful men and women like that, eh?

Charles, that’s true. I guess I mean that IVF and surrogacy would have to finally become as morally equal to childbirth as SSM is morally equal to marriage, because of that. I’m not sure I’m ready for a society that feels that.

These “older comments” shenanigans are irritating. The first thing I see is Lord Karth’s response, which makes no sense whatsoever without Judith’s initial snark. (You guys are BOTH great, by the way: don’t change a thing.)

Can we have the old, pre-disqus site back? I even liked the blue background.

The fallacy in the man’s latest thinking is the tacit acceptance that declining to extend to “private relationships that are privately defined” the status of a “structured institution with clear public purposes” somehow denies “dignity” to “homosexual love.” Homosexual love may or may not have dignity, may or may not deserve dignity, but it is a private relationship, privately defined, not a structured institution with clear public purposes. It’s dignity does not rest on a piece of of paper from the city hall.

Public opinion seems to be shifting toward acceptance of homosexual love. Fine, well and good. That is what lends it all the dignity it is ever going to have. It remains true that it is not “similarly situated” to heterosexual marriage.

He sounds like a good man. It’s difficult to maintain an outlook of disrespect and contempt toward a small minority of one’s law-abiding fellow citizens, year after year. I myself failed the test. Blankenhorn also failed. It takes a strong faith, apparently, to work in an unwavering way for the marginalization of gay people who simply want to join a civilizing institution.

Jan Hus writes: The better question to ask is why should your friends have access to the same benefits conferred upon married people who bear and raise children? Who actually perform the function of marriage? They shouldn’t.

Let’s consider the following couples:

(A) An opposite-sex couple that choose not to have children.

(B) An opposite-sex couple that can’t have children, due to infertility, and choose not to adopt.

(C) An opposite-sex couple that met and married in their 60s or 70s, when their potential child-bearing years were long past.

(D) A same-sex couple raising children (adopted, or the biological children of one of the two parents).

If marriage were actually some kind of reward for raising children, then (D) would be allowed to marry, while (A), (B), and (C) would have their marriages revoked.

The number of people who would actually support that is approximately zero, as far as I can tell.

Jan Hus, does your vision of “couples who actually perform the function of marriage” include the likes of Newt and Callista? What about Woody and Soon-Yi?

Such couples actively undermine the purpose of marriage, and yet their marriages are recognized by the state, and no one has yet tried to pass a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit such marriages.

The only thing that matters is whether we want to allow people to procreate offspring with someone of the same sex or not. That is the question regarding every other prohibited relationship, it was the question regarding interracial couples and cousins, children, etc. We should not separate into two questions whether a couple is allowed to procreate offspring and whether they are allowed to marry. That has been a goal of eugenicists for 100 years and we should reject it and choose equal marriage and procreation rights for everyone, even if it means some children don’t come out as good as other children. This focus on how kids turn out is disgusting eugenics.

(B) An opposite-sex couple that can’t have children, due to infertility, and choose not to adopt.

(C) An opposite-sex couple that met and married in their 60s or 70s, when their potential child-bearing years were long past.”

These examples do not support the SSM position. First, each example include opposite sexes. They still model the marriage ideal in that respect. They fulfill the function of marriage in that they model for others the uniqueness of marriage.

By the way, in some cultures, if a couple declares they have no intention of having children, they cannot marry. Our society is quite generous.

Homosexual couples are simply a different kind of relationship. They just don’t serve the same function.

Speaking of technical difficulties, my earlier response was lost in the ether (I think).

Anyway…

J writes:
“”If marriage were actually some kind of reward for raising children…”

This is true, although ironically it is the SSM agitators believe it is.

Marriage isn’t a reward conferred by the state. It exists independently of the state. The state merely recognizes its value and encourages it through policy.

What benefit does the state receive from a SS couple? Why should the state give it any special status?

And j brings out the old gotcha about childless marriages as being some kind of proof in support of SSM.

The simplest retort is that exceptions prove the rule.

But beyond that, there is the inconvenient fact that childless marriages are still comprised of opposite sexes.

Nearly all heterosexual couples (even those who say they do not want children) have a very high probability of producing children. That is why the state has a very keen interest in supporting those couples through marriage policy.

I know of several couples that were supposedly in situation (A) but found themselves — via change of heart, or accident — being biological parents (and ultimately very pleased with that fact). Can’t happen with a homosexual couple

(B) usually fertility problems become apparent only after marriage. Indeed among my cohort, after a year of marriage and failure to get pregnant, the endocrinologist is called in

(C) is really the only valid case, but even there you’ve got to have some imagination. What if the couple had met earlier — they could have had kids together. Even in their advanced years, they form the proper model of, you know, how mammals reproduce themselves.

The fact that marriage is recognized by the state and has civil implications means it is a political matter, no more and no less. Religions will always remain free to not recognize all types of marriages, and they are certain to.

Permitting same sex marriage is the least unjust of the available, limited alternatives. This case has been so solidly made in so many ways and places that discussion is now pointless.

The idea that there should be dogmatic opposition to such based on what is written in Leviticus… which is on the whole primitive, and not suitable in any way overall for civilized nations that have the hard and soft sciences… is absurd, not to mention made obsolete by Christ’s words in the Two Commandments. Whatever “Saint” Paul had to say is after the fact, not attributable in any way to Jesus, and a clear case of conversion syndrome, where overemotionalists seize a divine man’s words and use them to institutionalize what should instead be experienced. Paul’s work, like that of the “Muslim” fundamentalists currently vexing humanity, and their Jewish settler counterparts, is a clear case of all bathwater, no baby. One can soak oneself in this, and perhaps even be somewhat cleaner than before… but it is ultimately an inert, used, valueless thing, except as a case study in what not to do.

The only thing that matters is whether we want to allow people to procreate offspring with someone of the same sex or not.

There’s nothing to allow, they can’t. You always need a third person. They can never procreate offspring with the same sex, but they can raise offspring as same sex parents.

Whether or not you want to consider IVF and surrogacy beneficial or harmful aspects to do so is the question. I think it’s hamrful because the third person is one of the child’s biological parents and is forever denied any rights or meaningful position in the child’s life. This is the same straight or gay, and it’s a separate issue from SSM.

J, there’s an easy answer for the childless couples, as demonstrated above. It’s the couples like Newt and Callista that Jan Hus doesn’t want to deal with, as they do not model the marriage ideal, and yet the state allows them to marry.

Mitchell Young, thanks for the reply. But I really don’t think you’re making a convincing argument here.

You conflate “parenthood” and “biological parenthood”. You suggest that “biological parenthood” is a requirement for marriage, then are happy to grant exceptions for heterosexual couples who aren’t biological parents of any children because, well, if circumstances were different then maybe they would have had children.

But when faced with a same-sex couple that actually IS raising children, all your spirit of generosity suddenly goes up in smoke.

Your position is arbitrary, inconsistent, and deeply unjust. I have to believe that in any other context you would instantly reject such an obviously unsupportable line of reasoning.

If you want to argue against same-sex marriage on religious grounds, that’s fine. You can believe that marriage is something that God created specifically and categorically for heterosexual couples and that it would be contrary to the will of God for us to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Like all claims based on divine revelation, there’s no need — in fact, there’s no opening — for proof, reasoning, or justification. It’s an argument from belief, not based on secular logic and reasoning.

I think that the problem is that you want to be able to use reasoning to convince others to adopt a position that’s fundamentally based on faith, not reasoning. That doesn’t really work, and you end up tying yourself in knots.

Jan Hus says: These examples do not support the SSM position. First, each example include opposite sexes. They still model the marriage ideal in that respect.

Yes, they model your ideal of marriage in one respect (being heterosexual) but do not model it in another (having children).

Meanwhile same-sex couple D also might model your ideal of marriage in many respects. There is more to marriage than just being heterosexual, right?

Let’s carry this argument to its logical conclusion. Two couples, one of which violates every single aspect of your “ideal of marriage” except for heterosexuality, while the other couple is a perfect embodiment of your ideal of marriage except for heterosexuality.

You’d give a marriage license to the first couple, while denying it to the second couple.

In other words, all that matters is sexuality. Children are irrelevant, monogamy is irrelevant, faith is irrelevant, love is irrelevant, commitment is irrelevant.

John Howard: “The only thing that matters is whether we want to allow people to procreate offspring with someone of the same sex or not.”

Dave Dutcher replied: “There’s nothing to allow, they can’t. You always need a third person. They can never procreate offspring with the same sex, but they can raise offspring as same sex parents.”

That’s wrong Dave, we can allow, in fact we do allow, the use of genetic engineering and stem cell technologies to create sperm for a woman or an egg for a man, and use them to reproduce offspring with someone of their same sex. There is nothing else to the question of marriage than whether we will allow people to attempt making people that are not the union of a man and a woman. We should not separate marriage from conception rights, or allow genetic engineering. We should keep people created equal, as the natural offspring of a man and a woman, and everyone should have an equal right to be a man or a woman and reproduce as one or the other, but not both, not with either.

People seriously do want to allow same-sex reproduction. Whether it’s possible or not or safe or not is moot, all that matters is whether it is an abstract right or not. I contend that there is no right to procreate with the same sex or change sex and procreate as the other sex. We have a right to be the sex we are, and marry and reproduce as that sex. (Transgendered people can live as either sex, but should only be allowed to attempt to reproduce as the sex they would most likely have success as using their unmodified genes.)

J, I think your argument is able to succeed only with people who have realized that to be a decent person in this world, one has to put ideological notions in a secondary position in one’s life. Folks who put ideology in the forefront can’t be reasoned with, in the sense of making reasonable arguments. They simply use reason to protect their ideology from attacks on all sides. Whereas decent people recognize that to be decent to other people, you have to put ideology aside, and deal with human realities on their own terms, without constantly subjecting them to ideological tests. This is true no matter what side of the political spectrum one argues from or about. The SSM debate can’t be won as a battle of ideologies, only by resort to the human sense of decency that supercedes ideology in those who see the terrible limitations of all ideologies.

What is this “modeling marriage” nonsense?
I’d say “good for David Blankenhorn,” except that restricting divorce and assisted reproduction so that straight couples can also be reined in to his religious ideas of marriage and sex seems kind of counter-productive.

I still can’t believe we’re still sitting here talking about childbearing. Why should a society with clear church-state separation have to enshrine in US civil law some Platonic idea of what a “true” marriage is, and no others need apply?

Or to put a more specific face on it, women with hysterectomies should never be able to marry, because they won’t get a happy surprise down the road.

Blankenhorn argues that if conservatives accept gay marriage, gays should accept the principle that couples (presumably gay as well as straight) should be married before having children (by means natural and not). Good luck with that.

Better it would be to argue that gay marriage be recognized if homosexual couples refrain from having sex until they are married, as heterosexual couples once did and so should again. Is “gay love” truly consonant with the Biblical ideal, as its advocates aver, or is it simply part and parcel of a decadent society’s broader “rebranding” of old fashioned “carnal desire” as something “sacred”? This is one clear way to put it to the test.

That’s wrong Dave, we can allow, in fact we do allow, the use of genetic engineering and stem cell technologies to create sperm for a woman or an egg for a man, and use them to reproduce offspring with someone of their same sex.

They don’t create it, they use donor egg or sperm, or surrogates. Straights also do this to combat infertility, and some even do so for mildly eugenic reasons. See “The Genius Factory” by David Plotz.

I still can’t believe we’re still sitting here talking about childbearing. Why should a society with clear church-state separation have to enshrine in US civil law some Platonic idea of what a “true” marriage is, and no others need apply?

Because marriage’s other side is how it contributes to the stable raising of kids. If you enshrine unstable or harmful modes of parenting, everyone pays the cost later on. If we’re going to become a nation of kids raised in monogender families with a side order of day care, we reap the costs of that.

The Frankensteinian technology of cloning can help lesbian couples procreate by giving them a child that has half the DNA of each partner. Ultimately, this is what procreation comes to for same-sex couples–a Frankensteinian technology that works only for lesbian couples, not male homosexual couples. As such, it’s not a good basis for any equal protection claim, even aside from the very dubious morality that’s involved in cloning humans.

Ken, well, male couples hope to use artificial wombs, or hire surrogates (they already do that, but so far it’s just one of the men providing half, and a woman providing the other half. I’ve heard of terrible arrangements where they got an egg from one of the guy’s sisters, fertilized by the other guy, so the baby will be related to both of them (one guy would be the father and the other guy would be an uncle). They totally want to use stem cell derived gametes to make offspring together just as much as lesbian couples do. (Even lesbian couples would have to argue abut which woman carried the baby and which women had artificial sperm made from her gametes, while two men would be more or less equal contributors, since neither would be the mom.

There is no right to do any of that stuff, there is only a right to procreate naturally, with someone of the other sex. We should acknowledge that in law, with a federal ban on creating people by any means other than joining a man and a woman’s natural gametes.

“If your main argument against extending the benefits of marriage to same sex couples is that those benefits are there to subsidize child rearing, then it seems to me that you have to explain why those benefits are conferred on people who are not raising children.”

Because it remains the primary means of sustaining the society, in fact, the only means.